Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Tis as much as in us lies a destroying of God. By this temper we destroy that God that made us, because we destroy his intention and his honour. God cannot outlive his Will and his Glory: Because he cannot have any other Rule but his own Will, or any other end but his own Honour. The setting up self as our end, puts a nullity upon the true Deity; by paying to our selves that respect and honour which is due to God, we make the true God as no God. Whosoever makes himself a King of his Princes rights and Territories, manifests an intent to throw him out of his Government: To choose our selves as our end is to undeify God, since to be the last end of a rational Creature is a right inseparable from the nature of the Deity; and therefore not to set God, but self always before us, is to acknowledge no being but our selves to be God.

3. Tis as much as in us lies a destroying of God. By this temper we destroy that God that made us, because we destroy his intention and his honour. God cannot outlive his Will and his Glory: Because he cannot have any other Rule but his own Will, or any other end but his own Honour. The setting up self as our end, puts a nullity upon the true Deity; by paying to our selves that respect and honour which is due to God, we make the true God as no God. VVhosoever makes himself a King of his Princes rights and Territories, manifests an intent to throw him out of his Government: To chuse our selves as our end is to undeifie God, since to be the last end of a rational Creature is a right inseparable from the nature of the Deity; and therefore not to set God, but self always before us, is to acknowledge no being but our selves to be God.

Secondly, 2. The second thing, Man would make any thing his End and happiness rather than God. An end is so necessary in all our actions, that he deserves not the name of a rational Creature, that proposeth not one to himself. This is the distinction between rational Creatures and others; they act with a formal intention, whereas other Creatures are directed to their end by a natural instinct, and moved by nature to what the others should be moved by reason: When a Man therefore Acts for that end, which was not intended him by the Law of his Creation, nor is suited to the noble faculties of his Soul; He acts contrary to God, overturns his order, and merits no better a title than that of an Atheist.